Wishing Further
by Shu of the Wind
Summary: Drabble dump for LingFan. 008: Tranquility. The horizon of Persephone flickers into a mirage as they leave atmo, and Lan Fan checks her pistol, wondering whether or not anyone will mind if she shoots that blonde-haired gold-eyed Alliance hun dan before they reach Whitefall. T for James Bond level stuff.
1. Wordplay

Rated: T/T+. Implied (but no explicit) sexytimes. Just some makeouts. And lots of touching.

* * *

><p>"You're so stunning."<p>

Lan Fan went very still. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the Emperor lying on his side, watching her. She'd been wiping her arm down with water, clearing out dust and dirt from the day, and he was watching her the way he always did. He was fascinated with her automail; he liked to take her hand and turn it palm up, studying the way the joints worked as he thought. She'd stolen the sheets, and he still had the blankets, but he'd kicked most of them off by now. Sudden, fierce desire hit her in the gut. He was so _beautiful_, lean and supple and scarred and _Ling_, and it would be just like him to be both completely aware of it and completely oblivious to the effect it would have on her. She swallowed hard, and then looked down at her wrist again. There was a crust of muck between two of her wrist joints.

"This one is not worthy of your consideration, majesty," she said, but she slanted a look at him to let him know she was joking. She hadn't joked with him since before Amestris. His lips quirked up.

"Lan Fan, I consider you daily. Hourly. Even more often than that if I can get away with it. You deserve to know it." He pushed himself up on his elbow, reached forward with his free hand, and tugged at the edge of her sheet, pulling one end off of her bare shoulder. Lan Fan squeaked, and caught it. "You're beautiful. You're _so _gorgeous right now."

She was pink, she was sure. "I'm—I'm covered in dust and blood—"

"Mm, sexy."

She wanted to smack him with a pillow. As it was, she turned her face away before she completely embarrassed herself. "_Majesty_—!"

"Hey, hey." She heard rustling behind her. Then there was a warm touch on her shoulder, the one with her automail, and the Emperor slid an arm around her collarbone, pressing his lips to her neck. "How many times do I have to tell you before it stops embarrassing you? Because I will keep saying it again—" He kissed her again, higher up her throat this time. "—and again—" The soft spot of skin, just behind her earlobe. "—and _again—_" He swept the hair off the back of her neck and put his lips there too, and she felt her whole body jerk. "—until you believe me."

Lan Fan shuddered, and he smiled against her skin. Ling kissed her neck again. "You're beautiful."

"No, I'm not."

There was a soft wet touch against her skin. Another kiss, open-mouthed this time. His tongue flicked out, and Lan fan jerked in her chair. He whispered: "You're beautiful."

"I'm not," she said, and the rag slipped through her fingers. She turned in the circle of his arm and left the chair, her hands, one human and dry, one metal and wet, brushing against the skin of his chest. She felt him hiss at the touch of her cold fingers. She stood on her own two feet, her hands on his shoulders. "I'm not beautiful."

He was smiling. Ling leaned forward, brushed his mouth against one of her ribs, where there was a scar from the first time she'd saved his life, in a brush with the Xie. "I'll start using synonyms soon."

"Please don't." It came out as a gasp. She was nearly laughing, even if she couldn't quite believe him.

His hands left her skin. Lan Fan almost snarled. But it was only to tug the sheet away. It pooled around her feet, and Ling put his hands on her hips, fingers digging into her skin, pulling her forward until she was straddling his lap. He kissed the pulse point in her throat. "You're stunning," he said, and then he touched his tongue to her pulse and she let out a breath, but he'd already moved, mouthing a line up her throat, to her jaw, to her cheek. "Striking," he added, and brushed his lips over her cheekbone.

Her eyebrow was exquisite. Her temple lovely. He kissed her eyelids and called them handsome; he ran his lips over the curve of her ear and called her dazzling. She pushed his shoulders, leaning forward into him, but he didn't fall back just yet. He kissed her lips and called them flawless, and it was only when she barely remembered what had started all this that he pulled back, cupped her face in his hands, and said, "Lan Fan, you're _perfect_, and I love you for it—" that she forgot anything else at all.


	2. Drift

_prompt: drift_

_Shameless Pacific Rim!AU. Don't judge._

* * *

><p>In her dream, the Emperor was whole again, and well. The serial number—<em>JA-15392<em>—embossed and shiny on the back of the door. She traced it with her fingers. The room smelled of the Drift, sweet-and-sour chemicals and sweat. Her helmet was under her arm. She put it on and heard the hiss of the airlock closing. Ling was already waiting for her on the right-hand side, suited up and strapped in; he reached out to touch her hand as she went to take her place, and Lan Fan let him, weaving her fingers into his. He set her palm against the side of his helmet. Olivier had told her once that once you drifted with someone, there was no need for words anymore. Lan Fan hadn't ever believed that. She'd never needed words for Ling anyway. He'd always known precisely what she was saying without her ever having to open her mouth.

The visor of her helmet shattered. She was looking at him in pieces. His hand fell out of hers. The ocean was rushing in. She took a gasping gulping breath, and tasted blood and saltwater on her tongue. Her feet were locked in, and she couldn't get to him. Lan Fan slammed her hand on the control board and keyed the emergency escape pod just before the water crashed into her and washed her away.

She woke sobbing and screaming, the sheets torn where her metal hand had clenched them too hard. Ling had his arms around her, his fingers in her hair. She turned to breath in the smell of him, the warm living scent of skin and his shampoo and the dog tags around his throat, and he held her tightly, lips against her temple. "You're all right," he said, and lay back on the bed, letting her rest her head against his chest so she could feel as well as hear the staccato beat of his heart. "We're all right. You're all right. We're alive."

She lifted her head and kissed him until she tasted salt again. She wasn't sure if it was from her tears or his.

* * *

><p>She was sixteen and painfully fresh when she'd seen their Jaeger for the first time. She hadn't been able to speak at the sheer <em>immensity<em> of it, the complexity, the absolute power wrapped up in every metal sinew. She'd licked her lips and stared at it, flexing her prosthetic without thinking. She'd designed this one herself (well, mostly) and she'd been surprised when the Jaeger Program had accepted her because of it, not despite of it. The program manager, a man with large muscles and almost no hair, had clapped her very hard on the shoulder and said that it indicated that she had the sort of brain that they could use, even if she _wasn't _allowed to actually get into a Jaeger. Then she hadn't thought she'd be able to keep on living if she was banned from drifting. That Jaeger was everything she'd ever wanted. She wanted to crawl all through it, see how it worked, take it apart to examine every inch.

Ling knocked his shoulder with his, and she turned to look at him, eyes shining.

"We get to name it," he said, "after we drift."

He'd never had doubts. Not like her. Even after they'd passed the compatibility test, her _bo_ to his throat, his pressed deep into her gut, she'd lain awake and wondered what would happen if they failed. They'd both be sent home. If anyone at the shatterdome discovered how young they were, they'd be sent home _anyway_. Seventeen and sixteen were too young to be a part of the program, but the authorities in Beijing had been desperate, and they hadn't looked too close at their ID. They'd gone through the three week orientation, through the six month training program. Now they were in a shatterdome, two out of the six that had graduated in their class, and they had a Jaeger.

If they could Drift.

Ling caught her hand, her metal one, and tugged on it. Lan Fan turned. "Come on," he said, and jerked his head after the man with impressive muscles. "We need to go try out the Drift."

She nodded.

* * *

><p>She'd been twelve years old and watching over a troop of six year old white belts when Ling Yao had first traipsed into her grandfather's Shanghai studio. Half-Chinese, half-Japanese, he'd spoken Shanghainese with an odd accent and whistled through his teeth. "I'm a blue belt," he'd said to her conversationally, once she'd set the kindergartners to their katas and gone to question her grandfather with her eyes.<p>

"Brown," she'd told him, and his eyes had lit up.

"You should teach me."

Lan Fan had flushed, and kept her mouth shut. She'd had no idea what to say. She'd always been better with fists than words. She'd beckoned him into the ring and had him pinned in thirty seconds, but he'd just popped back up and demanded that she show him how she'd done it. She'd had kindergartners to watch, so she'd begged off, but the next day he was back, and the day after that too, until she realized she didn't ever go a day without seeing Ling Yao, and she couldn't actually imagine having one. He even came when he was sick, and she'd panicked enough that she'd put him in her bed and given him an ice bag for his fever before she'd realized that she'd never let him into the apartment above the studio before that moment.

Ling Yao did that to people.

* * *

><p>The training videos had said that it was impossible to describe a Drift. Lan Fan couldn't find the words herself. It didn't bother her the way it seemed to bother Ling. After all, he was the one with the silver tongue. The Drift reduced him to silence. "You are me," he said to her one day, as he was lounging in on the floor of the shatterdome dojo, and she was going through one of her black-belt kata, carrying an unsheathed blade and spinning it in her flesh hand. He was wearing nothing but a pair of pants with the symbol of her grandfather's studio near the ankle hem. Lan Fan was wearing spandex shorts and a sports bra, because it was too hot in the shatterdome to be wearing anything else. "I am you. But it's more than that. It's—it's <em>more<em>."

She'd shrugged, sheathed the sword, and flopped down next to him on the mats. He curled into her, his hair tickling her cheeks, and set his hand against the flat of her stomach, on the soft parts that she never showed to anyone else.

She closed her eyes.

For Lan Fan, the Drift itself was enough.

* * *

><p>Their first Kaiju was a Category Three. Codename: Chimera. They'd come into the war late enough that Ones and Twos almost never showed up anymore. Lan Fan had specifically requested their mechanic that someone come up with a style of grenade that would be big enough to stun a Kaiju, and they'd delivered.<p>

She'd held the mouth open. Ling had shoved the grenade inside. Together they'd held the mouth shut until the Kaiju's head burst, sending blue blood and bits of brain all over the windshield of the Immortal Emperor.

Two weeks later, some journalist found out that they were both underage, and they were hailed as the youngest Kaiju Killers in the fleet. The government hailed them as the most patriotic teenagers of the decade.

Ling cut out an article from one of the spoof magazines and taped it up on his door. The headline was "_Youngest Runaways in the Fleet_." For some reason he thought it was hilarious. Lan Fan thought of Fuu, and couldn't quite laugh about it.

* * *

><p>The Immortal Emperor had two swords laid into its arms, two knives buried in its legs, flash missiles in its chest, and a great big reactor for its heart. Its highlights were crimson and chrome, and at her request, the mechanics had painted an enormous yin-yang symbol on its shoulder as its crest. It reminded her of days spent in her grandfather's studio, him correcting her stances, closing her hands around the blades.<p>

_If you can defend yourself,_ he'd told her, _then you can defend anyone._

When she was alone, she would go sit on the balcony that looked out over the shatterdome and stare into his face. She knew the Emperor stared back.

* * *

><p>Once, someone sold a photo of her and Ling sitting together in the mess, hands tangled, and then the romance bomb dropped in the gossip pages.<p>

Ling hooked an arm around her waist the next time they went in for an interview and didn't let her go until they were back in the limo, on the way to the shatterdome.

* * *

><p>On Lan Fan's seventeenth birthday the Breach gave her a present. A Category Four, heading for Shanghai. Kain Fuery named it <em>Homunculus.<em> It was a blobby thing, a slow-mover, its hide so thick that her knives glanced off and his swords barely cut. Finally they'd wrestled it onto its belly, and Lan Fan had shoved her left hand forward—her metal hand, her dominant hand—and let the finger rockets fly into its guts. When it had staggered, because even that hadn't killed it, Ling tore its jaw off and flung it to shore. She heard later that the jawbone landed in a park, and that once it was cleaned off and purified, children used it as a playground.

Somehow, that made her sick to her stomach.

* * *

><p>The Beijing Shatterdome was built to hold twenty Jaegers in a bay, and it had four bay, one for each cardinal direction. In the mess, she heard the wing she and Ling belonged to, the East Bay, called the "Prodigy Wing." She assumed that it was because of Ed and Al Elric, the German boys. They were younger than either her <em>or <em>Ling. Germany started its training programs early. Their Jaeger, Fullmetal Sentinel, was studded with rivets and screws, and had horns all along where its scalp would have been, if it had lived. It was the heaviest Jaeger in the bay. The first time they'd tangled with a Category Three, they'd stepped on its skull, and it shattered like pulp under the weight of its foot.

They were right next to the English colonel, Roy Mustang, and his partner Riza. Lan Fan liked Colonel Mustang's mechanic; Hughes treated her like a person, not like another pilot, and he was always willing to show her some of the insides of Mustang's Jaeger. The Marked Inferno was lighter and swifter than the Immortal Emperor (much more so than the Fullmetal Sentinel) but it had enormous tanks of gasoline all through its arms, guarded by the heaviest metal plates on the entire Jaeger. When Mustang and Hawkeye took to the water, there was often so much steam from the flamethrowers they'd put in the Inferno's wrist the news crews could never keep track of their kills.

She'd never spoken to Mustang beyond quiet greetings in the mess hall—when those two were together, they kept to themselves, the same way she and Ling did—but Riza caught sight of her one day after her birthdate had been plastered all over the newspapers and pulled Lan Fan into her room for an hour or two to teach her chess. Lan Fan went every Saturday. Eventually, chess turned into shooting lessons for Lan Fan, and kung fu lessons for Riza.

She kind of wanted to be Riza Hawkeye when she grew up.

* * *

><p>Once, a Kaiju named the Philosopher managed to break her long-fingered way into the Emperor's cockpit. Her talons lashed into Ling's shoulder and side, drawing blood, so much blood, and Lan Fan had screamed. Even if she hadn't been drifting with him, she would have felt like she'd been torn apart.<p>

She knocked the Kaiju onto its back and tore its head off. Then she'd shut down the Jaeger and pulled herself free of her harness, flinging herself at him, tearing his helmet off. His lips were covered in blood, human and kaiju blue, and his throat was bubbling.

"No," she'd said. "No no no no no. Don't die. _Don't _die. Don't die don't die don't die." She'd put a hand to his cheek and gone to grab something, anything, to stem the blood, but he'd lifted a shaking hand and covered her fingers with his.

Lan Fan had kissed him without thinking about it. Kaiju blood burned on her lips. She wrapped his flayed side in towels, and then pulled his head into her lap and leaned forward so she could watch every twitch of his eyes, feel every rattling breath that left his lungs.

The medics were there in minutes. Every second that had passed she'd watched him gasp and wondered if this was the day she died.

* * *

><p>Ling was barely able to walk when Olivier called them into her office. (Her lips were permanently stained Kaiju blue, like the skin of Ling's throat. She started wearing blue eyeshadow to go with it, and when people stared, she stared back until they fled in droves.) Mustang and Riza were there too. Ed and Al Elric were sitting on the couch. It was only the three of them in the shatterdome now. Six months of therapy, she thought, watching him move. Six months before that of recovery. She was eighteen. She hadn't been in a Jaeger in a year.<p>

"The program is being shut down," said Olivier, and she folded her hands on her desk. "We have enough for one last push." Her eyes sharpened. "You probably won't come back alive."

She'd looked at Ling. Ling had clasped her hand, weaving their fingers together. She hadn't hesitated to say yes.

* * *

><p>Her memories of the push were fragmented.<p>

The Marked Inferno breaking up, its leg torn off, its head knocked away. Roy and Riza deploying emergency pods, shooting to the surface.

The Fullmetal Sentinel lunging forward, tangling with the Category Five, with the Allfather, and slamming it into the Breach, vanishing with it.

All she remembered was the way the windshield had cracked, cracked and cracked like an egg being crushed, and then it had shattered and all she could feel and see and taste and touch was water.

She didn't remember how she managed to hit the emergency deploy. All she knew was waking up with Ling giving her CPR in the South China Sea. She'd choked, and vomited water, and he'd wrapped his arms around her, hid his face in her soaking wet hair, and he'd cried.

She held on.

* * *

><p>The shatterdome is closed now. The bays are being dismantled. The Jaegers are gone. Somehow, Lan Fan breached the surface with a piece of the Emperor dug into her metal hand, a long sliver of metal that completely destroyed her circuitry. Ed Elric brings his girlfriend to her and Ling's apartment in the weeks after the war's end, and Winry Rockbell designs her a whole new arm, one that fits better and functions smoother than anything she's touched other than the Emperor himself.<p>

They keep the shrapnel piece in a box on the mantelpiece in her grandfather's studio. He'd died in a Kaiju attack while Ling had been grounded. The studio itself had nearly been melted by kaiju blood. Lan Fan is wealthy now, she realizes with a funny feeling in her chest; more wealthy than anyone in her family has ever been. She rebuilds the block, and she still has money to spare. She starts the studio again. People come in droves. _The Youngest Kaiju Killer in China._ Of course they'd sign up. Ling has healed as well as he can, but on his right side he is more scar and metal than flesh. They have pieces of the Emperor salvaged and melded into his shoulder and thigh.

People want them to talk about it. Ling does, sometimes. So does Lan Fan, at women's colleges with Riza Hawkeye. Riza calls her every Saturday and they keep up an international chess game. Their men are both wounded. Roy is blind. Unlike Ling's shoulder, it can't be repaired.

She wakes screaming almost every night. Every night she doesn't, Ling does. His dreams are something he never talks about, but sometimes she wakes up before he starts moaning and she can hear him talking, begging for her forgiveness. "You're here because of me," he says, and she cups his face in her hands. "You're here because of me."

He asks her to marry him in the shadow of the Homunculus' jawbone.

Ed and Al come and visit every year for a month. Ed brings Winry. Al falls in love with Ling's sister, and he and Mei get married within six months. They accumulate nieces and nephews like ticks.

Ling is sterile. The Kaiju blue made him that way. They gather the orphans from the Kaiju attacks, as many as they can handle. Sometimes they ask about the war, but she always thinks to herself that they are too young.

The oldest is a girl who when she turns sixteen begs Lan Fan for a tube of blue lipstick.

Lan Fan gives it to her, and then takes her to the shatterdome memorial.

There is a lot to say.


	3. Cause You Are a Pirate

"I hear you're the man to see about immortality."

Avareco looked up from his pint. The kid clearly wasn't old enough to be in this bar. Fifteen, maybe. There was a roundness to his cheeks that still spoke to childhood, He also, clearly, wasn't from around here. His Amestrian was clipped with some sort of eastern accent Avareco didn't recognize, and even if he wore his Amestrian suit like a natural, the girl beside him was fidgeting with her gloves as though they were strangling her fingers. When she noticed him staring, she gave him a level look, and then went right back to fidgeting.

"Who wants to know?" he said, and looked back into his mug. It was nearly empty. The boy grinned, and dropped into the chair opposite him.

"My name's Yao," he said. "We've been looking for you for a very long time."

"How long?" Avareco snorted. "Since before or after you left your mother's tit?"

The girl bristled. Yao raised a hand without a word, and she settled again, though not without a very nasty glare. His smile hadn't dropped in the slightest; in fact, it only seemed to deepen a little.

Avereco leaned back in his chair. "I'll bite. What do you want?"

"Two years ago, you took a man to the Insulo de Xerxes. He was my guardian. His name was Fuu." Yao folded his hands neatly on the tabletop. They weren't a noble's hands, for all that he talked like one. They were scarred and callused. He had a swordsman's fingers. "He never came back. We were hoping you could take us there."

Avareco leaned back in his chair. The Insulo de la Sudo didn't have much to offer in way of entertainment, but the Dublith Tavern was clear and orderly. Behind the bar, Marte was watching him. He winked at her, and then looked at Yao again, jeriking his head at the girl with the twitchy trigger finger. "And who's she?"

"Lan Fan," said Yao. The girl kept her mouth shut, but her eyes were dark and deep and talkative. "Fuu's granddaughter. She's particularly interested in finding him, considering he's the only family she has left."

She inclined her head.

"Sorry, kids," said Avareco. "I don't take passengers."

"Really?" Yao groaned. "Come on. Can't you make one exception? We've been looking for you for two _years_. Do you have any idea how hard you were to track down with only a name? We didn't even know what your ship was called."

"I don't make exceptions. Especially not for a couple of snotnosed brats. You'd do better to forget the Insulo de Xerxes ever existed in the first place." He stretched, and stood. "Sorry to say, I can't help you."

"That's a shame," said Yao. He spun a coin between his long fingers. "It's not like we're coming to you with nothing. We _are _willing to pay. I heard from the bartender—" he tilted his head towards Marte, who went back to wiping out her cups "—that you're short of a crew, too. I can provide that. All you have to do is get us there."

The kid was being serious. Avareco glanced back at the bar, then across at the door, before leaning forward, and seizing Yao's collar. "Listen," he said. "I'm gonna make this real clear for you. No. Chance. In hell."

A knife pricked against his jugular. The girl had moved so smoothly he hadn't noticed her take a step, and her blade was sharp enough to burn. Yao hadn't lost that dumbass smile. "Don't tell me you've never been interested in immortality, Avareco. There has to be a reason why you named yourself _Greed_."

Avareco let go of Yao's collar slowly. As soon as his hand was flat on the table, the girl—Lan Fan—vanished her knive back into her skirts, and clasped her hands behind her like a soldier. Yao tilted his hat back on his head—it was big, with a long peacock feather, like something a commander from the Suda army would wear—and then crossed his arms over his chest.

"I'm the same as anyone," said Avareco. "Anyone'd want immortality. But that island's nothing but a death trap. Whirlpools and wrecks and shoals you can't even see. You can't get to it. Not without a—"

"Map," said Yao, and he pulled a parchment from his sleeve. He offered it to Avareco. Avareco glanced at the girl—her mouth was tight—and then reached out for the scroll, but Yao yanked it back.

"Do we have an accord?" he asked. "Or do we not?"

Immortality. He rolled that around in his mouth. The immortal Avareco, captain of the _Avarice_.

"Throw in the hat," said Avareco, "and you'll have a deal."


	4. Settle

Her daemon doesn't settle until she's fifteen. When it does, she's not sure what to think. Every member of the Huo has had a creeping, quiet daemon—snakes, lizards, bats. Something invisible, silent. Arasar is a wolf, small and soft and gray, with long teeth and bright eyes and a cocky gait. He can be as still as he pleases, when he wishes it, but he's not an individual, not a lone hunter the way her grandfather's hawk is. He's a pack animal. The clan whispers about him, and about her, as soon as Arasar settles, but all Lan Fan does is tangle her fingers in the ruff at his neck and hold on.

"They're stupid," he says in a low growl as he and Lan Fan pass a trio of twittering Yao girls. "You know they're stupid. They've _always_ been stupid. And jealous."

Lan Fan nods, slowly, but she doesn't quite believe him. After all, she may be taller and stronger than those girls, may know a hundred ways to kill a man with her bare hands, but she can't do what they do, either. She can't speak the way they do. She doesn't like poetry or walk in courtly halls the way they do. Sometimes she wondered if _she _might not be jealous of _them._ It was worse before Arasar finally settled, but once he did, she feels worse, somehow. Because no matter how strong and brave and powerful and silent she can be, her daemon says something's different about her. He says she can be _more_.

She doesn't know if she wants to be more.

* * *

><p>The young master's daemon has been settled since he was eleven. Siritha has a striking face and long springy fur, and she walks at the Young Master's side on her knuckles in a funny rolling gate that only monkeys have. She doesn't have a tail, so she can't hang upside-down from trees the way the Young Master does, but she hides higher up in the branches and pelts snotty nobles with date seeds and worse. One of Lan Fan's most vivid memories is of Siritha turning and slapping her bare primate ass at a group of nobles who were whispering about Lan Fan behind their hands. Lan Fan turned bright red behind her mask, and Arasar gave a low growling chuckle, deep in the back of his throat. He and Siritha have always been friends, but it changed a little after that. They worked closer together, in smoother harmony, and Lan Fan felt it in her training sessions with the Young Master. They worked better too.<p>

Kreena, her grandfather's daemon, flutters her wings and tells Siritha it's unbecoming of the Young Master for his daemon to be making an idiot of herself in front of the court. Siritha throws a meat bun at her and says that if Kreena can't be bothered to take care of her human's granddaughter, then Siritha's going to do it for her.

She remembers it later when Kreena flies in front of her during the battle at the Amestrian fort, and takes a bullet meant for her. She remembers the way her grandfather screams.

* * *

><p>She can't take the rooftops the way she would have before Arasar settled. When she chases Edward Elric, he scrambles up through an automail metal dump and makes a tremendous leap onto the rooftop just in time for Lan Fan to set off one of her grenades. He snarls and snaps when Ed catches her in his net, his daemon curling around his throat as he went to collect his automail arm. Arasar he traps in a stone hand that appears out of nowhere. She has to use a crowbar to wrench Arasar free when Ed is distracted by the Young Master.<p>

"Sorry," he says, when they're running away from the battlefield. Lan Fan slows at a corner, drops to her knees, and buries her face in Arasar's ruff.

"Don't ever apologize," she said into his fur, and he whined a little, his tail dusting the hard earth. If Siritha and the Young Master overhear it, they say nothing about it.

* * *

><p>Siritha is the one to catch her arm when she saws it off. She sees the Young Master shudder, a whole-body quiver that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, as she falls off his shoulder and hits the ground with a sharp scream. Arasar is making a soft whining sound in the back of his throat, circling her, licking tears off her face, as the Young Master drops to his knees and binds her wound with his jacket. "You fool," he says. "Damn you, Lan Fan, you <em>fool<em>," and if Arasar hadn't been Arasar, he would have snarled at the Young Master for saying it. Siritha's paws are bloody. Lan Fan swallows hard, once, twice, and then reaches out with her remaining hand for Arasar.

"Find someone," she says. "Find anyone. Leave a trail." She glances up at the Young Master, whose face is twisted and agonized, and says, "You have to go."

"No," he says, and his hands tighten on the knot over her open shoulder. "Lan Fan, I'm _not—_"

"He's coming," she says. "We need the Stone, master. We need it. For Xing," she says, and then she throws up on the dust next to her, thin and liquid and flat. He rubs her back without thinking about it, because he's Ling Yao, and he's always been kinder than he ought to be. "You have to _go_."

Something tugs at her gut as Arasar reaches the limit of how far they can be parted. He comes back within seconds. Her arm is gone. She doesn't ask where it went.

"_Go,_" she says, not to the Young Master but to Siritha, and Siritha nods and takes the Young Master's hand and draws him away. She calls after him. "I'll be hiding below."

She can't catch Arasar as he leaps down into the sewer after her, but he lands on all four feet like a cat, and lets her lean on him as she walks in the opposite direction.

* * *

><p>At first she thinks Alphonse Elric has no daemon; that, or that Dr. Knox's daemon, a big old grumpy cat, ate it before she ever saw it. Then he takes off his helmet to let the little dove free, and she flutters to rest on the headpost of Lan Fan's sickbed, cooing softly. It's the only thing that puts her to sleep, after Al delivers the message from her master. That, and Arasar's head resting heavy on her belly, reminding her that he'll tear out throats for her while she's injured like this.<p>

She wonders what happens to a man's daemon when he's turned into a monster.

* * *

><p>Homunculi don't have daemons, she realizes, as she extends her elbow blade into Gluttony's head. She wonders how King Bradley does, a scratched-up, scarred old lioness with wicked teeth and a chopped-off tail. She supposes it's for the same reason that Siritha is still at her master's side, even if Greed is using the Young Master's mouth.<p>

Siritha clings closer to Lan Fan's side than any daemon other than Arasar ought to, but Lan Fan can understand why.

* * *

><p>The journey back to Xing is longer than it ought to be. There are more dust storms on this crossing, and they have to linger in the ruins of Xerxes for more than a week as the wind howls and sand scores deep holes in the stone walls of a dead man's home. They burned Fuu before they left Amestris, and she sleeps around the heavy urn that holds his ashes and bones every night. She doesn't quite manage sleep. Arasar, his ear bandaged, rests heavy against her right shoulder, because her left is still too sore and untested to take the weight. She watches the Young Master sleep, or at least pretend to sleep; his chest rises and falls, but oftentimes he simply lies flat with his eyes on the ceiling, listening to the wind. Out of the three of them, Princess Chang is the only one who can manage a full night's rest, and she sleeps with her wildcat tucked into her belly. Lan Fan hasn't caught the beast's name yet. It just gives Arasar evil looks when it thinks Lan Fan's not paying attention.<p>

"Lan Fan," says the Young Master on the ninth night, and Lan Fan lifts her head from her grandfather's ashes. Siritha is sitting by the Young Master's head, stroking his hair with her agile fingers.

"Master," she says. Her voice cracks. She hasn't had water in a few hours. She's been saving it for Princess Chang. "Is there something you have need of?"

He shakes his head, and sits up. Siritha crawls into his lap. She's been especially clingy since Greed was destroyed, as if she needs to hear Ling's heartbeat and feel him breathe just to make sure that he's Ling, and he'll stay that way. He eyes her, and then he glances at Arasar, and Arasar's missing ear, sliced away by she doesn't know what, before he licks his lips. "May I see your arm?" he asks, and Lan Fan can't help it; she shifts a little so her left arm is behind her, just out of reach. If he notices, the Young Master says nothing about it. "Amestrian technology is…unique in regards to prosthetics. And it's…" he searches for a word. "Please may I see it?"

She nods, licking her lips, and then she peels off her jacket so she is sitting in a sleeveless shirt, and scoots closer so he can touch the arm. The stump of her shoulder still aches and pounds from the wrench of catching Greed—of catching the Young Master—but simple movement doesn't sting too much. He looks up at her, and when she offers her hand, he takes it in both of his, turning it so her palm faces the ceiling. His touch is light and clinical as he lifts each of her fingers, turns them as much as they will turn, and then lets them fall again. The lanternlight flickers against his face.

"There will be talk," he says, "when you come back with a metal limb."

She goes to shrug, then remembers with a shock of warmth to her face and neck that he's holding her hand. Lan Fan bites her tongue instead. "There's always talk," she says in a low voice, and doesn't look at him. "It will simply be different, this time."

His fingers tighten against her wrist. Then Master Ling pulls her arm forward a little, and traces the lines of her plates with his fingertip, up her wrist, up her forearm. She can't feel texture or pressure with her new arm, but she can feel temperature, and his finger is a bead of warmth against her metal flesh. She thinks of her jealousy of the pretty court girls, with all their dainty daemons; she thinks of the women of the Huo clan, their shadowy companions. She thinks of Master Ling and Siritha slapping her ass, and she thinks of Kreena winging in front of a bullet for her as her grandfather attempted to blow himself up to take King Bradley down.

"I don't care if they talk," she says suddenly, and this time when Ling looks up at her, she meets his gaze. "I am not ashamed."

He squeezes her metal hand, and smiles.

* * *

><p>Their reception in Xing is tremendous. Lan Fan keeps her fingers tangled in Arasar's ruff as they are presented to the Emperor, as Master Ling offers the Philosopher's Stone they fought so hard for to a selfish old man terrified of his own death. She's dismissed after the first hour of discussion of heirdom, and Lan Fan wanders the halls outside of the Imperial apartments. Some of the daughters from the Lotus Hall put their hands up to their mouths and whisper.<p>

"Is that the Huo girl?"

"She looks so weathered."

"And her daemon, all bruised and beaten—"

"What happened?"

One giggles. "I wonder if she tripped and fell."

Lan Fan looks them right in the eye, and says, "Actually, I cut my own arm off," before she folds her hands behind her back and waits beside the Gate of Paradise. Arasar sits beside her, and as soon as the women are gone, he turns his head up to her.

"Feel better?" he says. Lan Fan smiles.

"Oh, loads."

* * *

><p>Master Ling is Emperor before she realizes that Siritha is acting differently. At first, Lan Fan thinks she's imagining it. The macaque, who has always been so bold and brazen, shies away from her now. Master Ling acts no differently than he has always done, teasing her and trusting her, but Siritha barely ever emerges from the spot under his throne where she has taken to hiding herself. Arasar can't work out what the matter is either. It's confusing.<p>

There are many things she's not ashamed of, now. She's not ashamed of being crippled. She's not ashamed of being strong. She's not ashamed of loving the Emperor. She knows many people love him, no more and no less than she does. But she'd be lying if she said that Siritha's new habits don't bother her, because they do. She remembers the spry, saucy little daemon who slapped her ass rather than let Lan Fan be bullied, and she misses her, even if she hasn't exchanged a word with Siritha in years.

The Emperor calls her to his office one day, and she finds him pacing. Siritha is nowhere to be seen. After a careful scan of the rest of the room, she finally finds the daemon perched on the back of a trunk, something tangled between her fingers. She's braiding ribbon. It's something she only does when Master Ling is nervous. Lan Fan looks from Siritha to the Emperor, and then bows. "Majesty," she says, and the Emperor comes to an abrupt stop in front of his desk. "How may this one serve you?"

"No," he says, abruptly. Then he lets out a sharp breath. "Lan Fan, can you lift your head? Please."

She hesitates, and then she straightens. Her mask feels cool and still against her face. She clasps her hands tight behind her back. Arasar sits beside her, sniffing the air absently. His ear has healed well. There's just enough fur to keep the sensitive skin covered, but she has to be careful to scratch around, rather than over, his ears now. She often does it with her metal hand, because he says it gets at the itches better. She's not sure she believes him, but she does it anyway. Siritha finishes her first braid, and begins on a second, using crimson and gold silk. The Emperor rubs his wrist, where he's had the ouroborous mark inked into his skin—_a memory_, he told her, _and a remembrance_—and then he takes a step closer to her.

"I've…received a request," he says. His voice is tight, but he's trying to hide it. "One of the boys from the Zhao clan has petitioned for your hand."

This is absolutely not what she was expecting. Lan Fan and Arasar exchange a glance. It feels as though the bottom of her belly has fallen away. She licks her lips. "I see."

Something unidentifiable flickers through the Emperor's eyes. "Were you aware that he was going to ask?"

Lan Fan shakes her head wordlessly. She doesn't even think she knows anyone from the Zhao family. Something in the Emperor's shoulders tightens, and then loosens again. His mouth quirks up a little. "Would you like me to send him a polite rejection?"

Lan Fan's about to nod, and then she thinks better of it. "No," she says. "Be rude."

The Emperor chokes on a laugh, and grins at her. "Rude?"

"He didn't even ask me," she says in a low voice. "How am I supposed to say yes to someone who says nothing to me himself?"

The strangest look passes over Master Ling's face. On the back of the trunk, Siritha looks up and then away again. Then, in a purposefully light voice, the Emperor says, "What would you do if someone were to say something, Lan Fan?"

Arasar stands and circles around her legs. Lan Fan wonders if they're talking in hypotheticals anymore. If they ever were. She hesitates. "Um," she says creatively, because the Emperor is watching her. "It would—it would depend on the person. I think."

"You think?"

"Know," she says, and when his forehead wrinkles, she says it again. "I _know_. It…it would depend on the person."

He tilts his head just slightly. Siritha mirrors him. Arasar makes a soft whuffling sound, and mutters, "Obvious," under his breath. Ling glances at Arasar, and then up at Lan Fan again, and there's a real smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

"Obvious?"

She flushes red under her mask. Arasar nudges her metal hand with his head. "Um," she says again, because even if she's not ashamed of it, she'd never actually thought that she would ever _say _anything about it.

Siritha makes a happy chortling sound and leaps off the trunk. In two bounds, she's across the floor and on Ling's shoulder. She's too heavy for it now, but he balances for her anyway, because she's his and he's hers in a way that Lan Fan can only understand with Arasar. He's hers and she's his. Siritha whispers something in Ling's ear, and then she leaps again, and she hits Lan Fan's chest before Lan Fan can even take a breath. She's funny in her arms, tingly, warm and softer than she thought, but there's a moment where she can't breathe for touching Siritha, and it looks like Ling can't breathe either. His hands twitch and clench as Siritha curls into Lan Fan's chest, hooking her fingers into Lan Fan's shirt, and looks up into her face.

"Obvious," she says, in a final tone of voice, and then she reaches up and unhooks Lan Fan's mask from her face. Lan Fan doesn't protest. She has her arms full of macaque and doesn't actually think she can stop Siritha anyway. Her whole body is tingling with the touch of another daemon. There's a funny, staticky, crackling feeling creeping up her spine.

The Emperor's much closer now. She realizes it only when she looks up from Siritha's smug face and finds that he's standing right before her, his hands on his daemon's shoulders. He bends down a little, and sets his cheek to Lan Fan's. She thinks he's breathing in the smell of her hair. Lan Fan can't breathe at all. Touch has overwhelmed her.

It feels like a lighting bolt straight to her soul when Arasar takes two steps forward and knocks his head into Ling's hand. She almost can't stand it. Siritha scrambles free of the pair of them, and suddenly there's no space between them. His hand creeps to the back of her neck. Lan Fan kisses him first, and his mouth is like the touch of a star.

Arasar nips at Siritha's stubby tail, and presses hard against her side, sighing in pleasure.

* * *

><p>AN:

Daemons  
>Ling-macaque<br>Lan Fan-Tibetan wolf  
>Fuu-Barbary falcon<br>Ed-mongoose  
>Al-dove<br>Winry-mouse  
>Mei-wildcat<p> 


	5. Butterfly Song

**A/N: **

Okay, so this is kind of a shameless _Uta no Prince-Sama _AU. For those who haven't seen UtaPri, the basic storyline is there's this school called Saotome Academy, where aspiring teen idols or songwriters go in order to be funneled directly into the industry. In order to graduate, you need to come up with a final project and perform it. One half of the final project pair must be a songwriter; the other must be a singer.

Also I couldn't help it I referenced _Kimi Ni Todoke _too STAHP JUDGING ME

* * *

><p>Lan Fan had never liked singing in public.<p>

It wasn't that she was bad at it, particularly. Sometimes, she thought she sounded rather good. It was just that she didn't want anyone _else _to hear what she wrote in the middle of the night, and she always felt odd singing other people's songs. She was getting fairly good—good enough to get into Saotome Academy for Aspiring Musicians, anyway—and she knew that someday she would probably have to perform, even if it was only to demonstrate to a future musical partner what something was supposed to sound like, but she didn't have to like it. So she spent most of her time in the back of the classroom, listening quietly, taking notes, and humming to herself at night.

Sometimes, though, on weekends, when the other students were off on school-sponsored trips to town, she would wander around the grounds where she knew nobody would hear, and she would sing to herself. It was easier to pick out mistakes in lyrics or in tone when she sang, rather than humming, and besides—nobody could hear her out here. Besides, it meant she could sit in trees without teachers getting mad at her. Lan Fan clambered up into her favorite singing tree—a big old pine with gnarled branches and thick foliage—and propped her musical theory textbook on her knees, so she had a place to write. And actually, she was in the tree for more than an hour before she realized she'd started singing. Sometimes she did it without thinking, this singing thing. She'd be halfway through a song before she even realized she'd opened her mouth.

She'd just finished singing through the chorus, and paused to make a note on her paper, when she heard the slow applause from down below. Lan Fan squeaked, and nearly dropped her notebook. At the base of the pine tree was a boy with a scarf wrapped around his face, and heavy sunglasses sliding down the bridge of a sharp nose. He pushed them up, and put his hands on his hips.

"Hi," he said. "You have a nice voice."

"Um," said Lan Fan eloquently. She could feel her face burning. "…thank you. I suppose."

The boy studied her for a moment or two, and then clambered up into the tree, sitting on the branch opposite. He couldn't be all that much older than her, she thought, but he wasn't a Saotome student; he wasn't in uniform, first of all, and secondly, he had an air about him that made him seem very un-high school, even if one went to such a strange school as Saotome Academy. He loosened his scarf and let it settle around his throat instead. He was smiling. Something about him, for some reason, seemed a little familiar, but she couldn't place it. Lan Fan pulled her papers closer to her, instinctively, and tilted her head to the side. "Who are you?"

"Hm?" He glanced at her from behind the sunglasses. "Oh. Ling. Hi," he added, and stuck out one hand. She took it, and blinked when she realized he had calluses. He didn't seem to be the type to work hard enough for it to show in his skin. "I'm just visiting, so you don't have to worry about me, you know, stealing your homework. Or something. Is that homework?"

"Not really," said Lan Fan, and closed her lyrics notebook. "I mean, I might turn it in someday, but it's mostly just…" Private, she wanted to say. When she wrote something to turn in, it was always light, cheerful—the stuff that pop idols needed in order to stay popular. The things she wrote in the middle of the night were nothing of the sort. They were twisting and dark, like minotaurian labyrinths. Sometimes they disturbed her. Maybe, someday, if she found a visual kei or punk rock band, they might be used, but until then, she only turned in her happier things. "It's not done," she added, feeling strangely self-conscious. She didn't _like _people hearing her minotaur songs. It made her feel awkward and bony, like she'd been in middle school, her hair too long, when her classmates had laughed behind their hands and called her _Sadako _and _Kayako_ and every other horror movie villain known to man. She smoothed her skirt a little, and frowned at him. The boy—Ling—cocked his head at her.

"Why not turn them in?" he asked. "It's different, you know? Compared to most of the stuff I've been hearing today, it's…fresh."

"It's just not…" She paused. "It's not talent stuff. You know? It's…it's darker." Then she scowled, because she _didn't_ _talk about _her minotaur songs and who the hell was this random boy to be questioning her like this and _why was she even answering him_—"What do you care what I turn in or not? It's not like you go here, or you're a teacher, or something. You can't be more than a second year."

"Technically yeah." He took his sunglasses off and perched them on the top of his head. "But I graduated. What's your name?"

She frowned again. If this boy had been at Saotome, he only would have graduated by getting a contract. He'd be working, in the industry—why on earth would he come back? It didn't really make any sense. "I'm Lan Fan," she said. "If you graduated, why…?"

Ling gave her a mirror-smile, and then pulled his messenger bag around into his lap, digging through it. He didn't speak for a moment. Then he pulled out a notebook, kind of like her own, but a lot more bedraggled, and paged through it to somewhere in the middle. It looked, she thought, like lyrics. He offered it to her.

"Can you look at this for me?"

"Why?"

He just offered another smile, and waited. Lan Fan hesitated, and then she took his notebook in both hands. The page was marked _Light_, with a small hashtag in front, and beneath the lyrics there were a few musical scores. A slow song, she realized, and hesitated again, glancing up at him. Ling, whoever he was, flicked his fingers at her as if to say, _go on_, and she licked her lips before looking through the lyrics again.

It was, she realized, actually quite good. Some of the lyrics didn't _quite _fit alongside the musical notes, and after looking up again for permission, she made a few marks in the margins in her neat, tiny handwriting, but other than that, she liked it. She actually liked it a _lot_, enough that it surprised her. She wanted to page through the rest of the book—her fingers nearly itched for it—but it was his notebook, and she wasn't about to violate trust like that. Instead, she closed the notebook, and offered it to him. "Is this your work?"

"Well, mostly," he said. "Now you've made notes, so it's not _entirely _mine, but…yeah." He didn't take the book from her. "You can look at the rest, if you like. I don't mind. Most of the others have been released already. That one's just…different."

She rested the notebook on top of her own. Lan Fan did not open it. She didn't need to. "I can tell."

He laughed. "Ouch. Was that meant to be an insult?"

"No, you just seem…" She flapped her hand a little. "It's…quieter. And you erased a lot. You can feel it if you touch the paper."

"Betrayed by my own notebook." He sighed. "What is the world coming to?"

She felt her lips twitch. Lan Fan looked down at her own lyrics book, and licked her lips. On the other branch, Ling swung his legs back and forth, humming under his breath. She recognized some of the notes—it was _Light_, faster, maybe, then the tempo in the notebook, but _Light_ nonetheless. Then he glanced back at her.

"What's yours called?"

"What?"

"The one you were singing." He cocked his head again. "Does it have a title yet?"

For some reason, she flushed again. Lan Fan couldn't quite meet his eyes. She looked down at her hands instead. "Um. It's—I was…thinking of calling it _Labyrinth._ Or _Labyrinth Butterfly._ I haven't…decided."

He hummed, not a judgment, just an acknowledgment. Ling turned to her. "Have you, you know, picked a partner yet? The singer-songwriter duo? It's due in a few weeks, isn't it? It's been a while since I thought about it."

"It's due Friday." And the likelihood of her finding someone was less to none. She didn't say that. "And no, I haven't, really."

He blinked. "But your stuff is _good_, Lan Fan. I can call you that, right? I mean, I don't know your last name, so I can't really call you anything else, but…"

"It's...fine." Nobody but her grandfather had called her Lan Fan in a long time. It was a little unsettling, but not…bad, necessarily. Only strange. "I just—I don't know." _People don't like me_. "There's an odd number of people in the class. And—and maybe I'll be put into a trio with someone. I work pretty well with a few people in class. Our styles—our school styles fishtail fairly well." Ed was more of a _rock on, bro_ kind of writer, but he had a flair and a methodical dedication to detail that she really liked, and he seemed to enjoy what little of her stuff he'd actually heard. The only reason she hadn't petitioned to work with him and Winry is that they were so…well. Ed and Winry. "I've been talking to the teachers. I'll be okay."

Ling hummed again. Then he nodded, like he'd made a decision. "You want to work with me?"

She choked, and nearly fell out of the tree. Spots popped in front of her eyes. Lan Fan took a deep, unsteady breath. "Y-You're not serious."

"I'm always serious," he said happily, and swung his legs again. "Seriously, though, you want to?"

"I'm not—" She swallowed hard. "I mean, I haven't even graduated, I've barely learned anything—"

"Happens all the time here, if someone in the industry likes you enough. _I'm _still learning, and I've been out of Saotome for a year."

"You have no idea how I write—"

"I know you write stuff I like, and stuff that's _good_." He had a strange expression on his face, half-laughing, half-not, as if he couldn't quite work out what the problem was. "The song you were singing, _Labyrinth Butterfly_, that was better than anything else I've heard in months. Not only that, but you're not afraid to correct _my _stuff."

"But I don't—"

"More than that," he added, and the laughter was gone—he was just _studying_ her, focused hard, "You don't treat me like an idiot, and you don't kowtow to me like a king. It's…" He searched for a word. "It's soothing. More than you know."

Suddenly, all the puzzle pieces clicked together in her head, and Lan Fan snapped her mouth shut. Then she licked her lips. "You're Ling Yao," she said, and he made finger guns at her.

"Yup! Even better, you didn't _recognize _me. You know how awesome it is to walk around after being super famous for ages and then have someone not know who you are?"

"You've—" She felt a little dizzy. Lan Fan seized the branch between her knees. "Your stuff has won awards—why would you want _me?_"

Ling blinked at her for a moment or two, and then he burst out laughing. Lan Fan turned pink. When he looked at her again, still smiling, her stomach clenched, and she turned red. He reached out and patted her hand before snatching the notebooks—both his and hers—away and scurrying back down the tree.

"_Hey_!"

"Don't worry, I'm not going through all of it." And he wasn't. He was looking at Labyrinth Butterfly and chewing on his lower lip, as if he was seeing something he actually liked. Lan Fan stuck her pen behind her ear and crawled down the tree after him, jumping the last seven feet. She landed hard, and her knees ached, but she jogged to catch up with him anyway. He closed her notebook, and offered it to her.

"So?" he asked, when Lan Fan had tucked her book beneath her arm again. "You gonna work with me?"

Lan Fan was quiet for a long time. Then she said, "Your song."

"What about it?"

"What's it called? _Light_?"

He studied her for a moment, and then put his sunglasses back on his nose. "For the moment. I've been trying to come up with a new title. _Light _is too…" Common, she thought he was going to say. "Undescriptive," he said instead, and that decided her. Lan Fan stuck out her hand.

"_Where The Light Shines_," she told him. He looked at her, and then at her hand, and when they shook, he squeezed her fingers. Then, before she could blink, he'd pulled her forward just enough so he could press his lips to her cheek. His mouth was warm, and he smelled like lemons. Lan Fan turned bright red, and made a sputtering noise. Ling grinned at her, and let go of her fingers.

"You know," he said. "I think we're gonna get along, Butterfly."

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong>

The song Lan Fan was writing is called '_Meikyuu Butterfly_,' or '_Labyrinth Butterfly._' It's sung by Lan Fan's FMA: B seiyuu, Mizuki Nana, and originally is from the anime _Shugo Chara! _My favorite lyric is this:

_You can't seize, you can't catch the labyrinth butterfly_  
><em>The wings in your concealed chest sing of freedom even for the people who can't see them.<em>

The song that Ling wrote is '_Hikari Sasu Basho He_', or '_Where the Light Shines_'. It's Ling Yao's character song from FMA: B, and is sung by his seiyuu, Miyano Mamoru. Miyano was also a seiyuu for one of the main characters in UtaPri, Ichinose Tokiya, which is why I was inspired to do this.

Favorite lyric is this:

_How much farther do I have to walk to reach it? _  
><em>Planting my feet firmly on the marvelous earth <em>  
><em>On this endless road toward the place where the light shines <em>  
><em>Someday<em>


	6. White Lie

_prompt: _white lie, by Dotdotdot. My first thought was con artists, so yeah. Here. Have a 1920s con artist AU.

* * *

><p>"So?" he asks, and she nods. She's beautiful right now, her hair done up in an elaborate tousle, her lips blood-red from make-up. She gleams in the starlight as they walk, arm in arm, and the silk of her long gloves feels like snakeskin against his palm. He wants to kiss her. He wants to pull her away, into the rose garden, where the crafted bushes are a foot taller than him, and he wants to touch her, run his fingers over her skin the way he hasn't in weeks. Months. She looks at him, a knowing look, and shakes her head a little. <em>No<em>, her eyes say. _Not yet. Wait_. And they will, because he knows her, and she knows him, and they've never had to go over plans or tactics or targets. They've always just understood.

"He's twenty-two," she tells him in a low voice. He hopes they look like what they are supposed to be, brother and sister, and not curled together, closer, deeper, like lovers. "Orphaned when he was six. He'll be wary. He's already suspicious. I think I unsettle him."

_You unsettle me_, he thinks, looking at her, but it's the best kind of unsettlement, the kind he never wants to get away from. He says, "You'll be fine. He's an easier mark than you might think. He's not as smart as we are."

"Not as smart as _you _are," she says, and he taps her under the chin.

"As _we _are, Lan Fan. You have him eating out of your palm already. Just give it time."

She looks at him, and licks her lips. "How long this time, Ling?"

"A few months, maybe."

"Can we afford that?"

"Yes," he says, and when she opens her mouth, he squeezes her fingers. "Listen to me. We'll be _fine_. All right?"

"I'm the one who manages the accounts," she says. "Not you. I know—"

"I'm not going to be sitting back and letting _you _do all the work," he says. "I have a mark of my own." He presses his lips to her cheek, and then pushes her away, because he has to. "Go. We have a con to run."

She nods, and, fixing a smile on her face, slinks off to their first mark. Ling watches for a moment or two, hands in his pockets, before tipping his fedora and whistling off down the lane. There are rich women aplenty in Montecarlo, and they're all practically begging for his hands in their wallets.


	7. Montana Jones

**A/N:**

a real true drabble

who knew I had it in me to actually write snippets

Also, hey, guess what! Shu is on Facebook. /interruptingshu

COME LOVE MEEEE

* * *

><p>The jungle was hot, and smelled of rotting leaves and old flesh from the dead bodies in the tomb's booby traps, and he was really, really wishing he'd remembered to bring more bug spray. Of course, it didn't really matter, now that they had people coming after them.<p>

With guns.

"You don't understand! A find like this only comes about once in a generation—"

"Move faster, please, Professor," she said, whacking at a vine with her machete (which he still didn't know where she'd picked up) and turning to look over her shoulder. "We have company."

"I _know _that, but we can't just leave it behind, it would be a sin against—against history, against academia, against the universe—"

"So you would actually die for a piece of rock."

"_Yes_," he snapped, and glared at her. Lan Fan stopped and just looked at him for a moment, in a way that made him want to curl up into a ball and beg for mercy. Then she let out a deep sigh, and shoved the machete at him.

"Here."

"What?"

"_Here_," she said, and folded his hand around the hilt of the sword. "You take that, and you keep going. I'll go back for it."

"But—"

"Can you shoot?"

Ling felt himself flush dully red. "No."

"Hand to hand combat training?"

"Sort of."

"Good." She was tying her hair back, shucking her coat. Lan Fan seized his hat off his head, and tugged it down low over her eyes. "Put your hair up, put my coat on, and go. They'll follow me. You're the one they want. You're the only one that's found this place. You have to go, sir."

"Don't call me sir," said Ling, but he pulled on Lan Fan's coat anyway. It was warm and smelled of her sweat, and in spite of himself Ling wondered if he had to give it back. The collar smelled like her shampoo. Lan Fan tied her hair back under the base of his hat, and then let out a sharp breath, and checked her pistol.

"What are you still doing here?" she snapped. "You have to _go_. Head west, Ed's waiting—"

A rife went off, and bark exploded above their heads. Ling yelped. Lan Fan shoved his head down, and pushed him towards the lake. "Go," she snapped. "Go, you have to _go—_"

The rifle went off again, but Ling still surged up, seized the collar of her shirt, and kissed her hard on the mouth. Lan Fan yelped against his teeth, but then he had jerked away again. "Luck," he said, and then he bolted for the lake, and Ed, and the seaplane were waiting.

She'd probably punch him when she came back (because she would come back, she _would _come back) but if he was going to die, he didn't want to do it without having kissed Lan Fan "Montana" Jones.


	8. Tranquility

The horizon of Persephone flickers into a mirage as they leave atmo, and Lan Fan checks her pistol, wondering whether or not anyone will mind if she shoots that blonde-haired gold-eyed Alliance _hun dan_ before they reach Whitefall.

Ling just has to cock an eyebrow at her to get her hand to drop away from the gun, but it don't mean she doesn't damn well imagine every second of it.

"Welcome to the good ship _Tranquility_," he says to the gaggle of passengers Winry went and picked up. Winry, Lan Fan thinks privately, is an idiot for thinking this is a good idea—the goods that Breda has them moving are a thousand times more tricksy than Breda himself even realized, and adding strangers into the mix is not healthy. Then again, it's their damn fool of a captain who actually took the commissions. "Mighty kind of y'all to sign aboard with us, and I can promise a peaceful voyage to Whitefall."

The blonde man with Alliance stink all over his shiny suit snorts a little, but he doesn't say anything, so Lan Fan can pretend she didn't hear him. Winry huffs quietly under her breath, and knocks her pointy elbow into Lan Fan's side. "_Liu kou shui de biao zi he hou zi de er zi_," she says into Lan Fan's ear, "but he's a high and mighty little man," and Lan Fan snorts in spite of herself. Ling cuts his eyes over to them, but it doesn't look like Little Big Man heard, so he just lifts his eyebrows and goes on.

"Now you've come aboard you've been shown your bunks," he says. "I'll expect you to keep to them. Dinner and supper are strictly timed, and we can at least promise something nutritious, if not tasteless. All rooms on my boat aside from your bunk and the kitchen are off limits. If you need to be accessin' the cargo bay, hold it until Whitefall. If it's an emergency, _hold it until Whitefall_. Ain't nothin' to be done out here in the black, and there's three full days of it ahead of us." He pauses. "If that's too difficult to understand, I'm sure Fuu can make it clear to you."

Grandfather looks up from where he's cleaning his gun at the table, and then looks back down again. _Mei's gonna have a fit_, thinks Lan Fan, eyeing the oil smears. Ain't no doubt.

A fingertip ghosts along her wrist, where she has her hands clasped behind her back. She glances out of the corner of her eye at the captain, who hasn't moved an inch aside from the hand that has now crept behind her back. Lan Fan faces forward again, and wonders if any of them will be able to read the smile in her eyes.

"Introductions," says Ling, and stands. His fingertip leaves her skin. "Like you heard, m'name's Yao. You'll be calling me that or Captain, if you please. Don't like my given name much." He tilts his head at Fuu. "Any questions, direct 'em to Fuu or to me. You won't be seeing much of the rest of us."

"And who are the rest of you?" asks the man in the white fedora. His smile seems genuine, if a little flat. "Of course, we know Miss Winry—" Winry gives a pleased little curtsy, and smiles "—but there seems to be—quite a collection of you."

Lan Fan meets her grandfather's eyes, and shakes her throwing knife deliberately out of her wrist sheath.

"'course," says Ling, looking pleased. Of course he wants to brag about the crew. He always does. "Lan Fan's pilot. You won't be seeing her at all."

Lan Fan inclines her head to Little Big Man, who seems surprised, but nods back.

"Mei—" he points at his little sister, who crinkles her eyes into a smile, "—is the ship doctor. Have any hurts, take 'em to her. Clinic's down at the end of the hall of bunks. Havoc is—"

"A freeloader," says Mei, at the same time Havoc says, "First mate."

"—a space barnacle we can't seem to shake," Ling finishes, and the double-blow makes Havoc wince. The man in the white fedora doesn't move an inch. Neither does the Companion, though she is smiling a bit. Her hair is almost as blonde as Winry's. Her bodyguard is silent, and keeps fiddling with his gloves. Lan Fan sighs—at least with a Companion signed on, Alliance can't just board them without a warrant—and looks at the table again. Ling's still talking.

"—gong will be rung in a few hours' time for supper, so I'd suggest you kip for a while. Rooms are cozy, but clean—unless you signed onto a shuttle, like our lovely friend Miss Hawkeye here." He dips the Companion a wink, and she snaps open a fan patterned with phoenixes. "Questions?"

"Yeah," says Winry into Lan Fan's ear. "What's Little Big Man's deal? He's twitchier than a rattlesnake on a hot stove."

Lan Fan strokes the hilt of her throwing knife, and murmurs back, "That's what I'm plannin' to find out."


End file.
